Reshared post from +Mike Elgan

Why is Apple's Siri still in ‘beta’?

Apple’s Siri personal assistant has been in development for 10 years. Apple doesn’t let app developers use the word “beta” for iPhone apps. And the company spends millions on — and make billions from — the advertising of their “beta” product specifically.

Given these facts, is it disingenuous, unfair, inconsistent, hypocritical and inaccurate for Apple to continue calling Siri “beta”?

http://www.cultofmac.com/215169/why-is-siri-still-in-beta

I've always been highly skeptical of the Better Place model of swapping EV batteries. Unless automakers would be willing to standardize battery pack formats, there is no way that a swapping system could be financially or logistically viable. 

Unfortunately for Better Place, lithium ion battery technology is still very early and rapidly evolving. There are a wide variety of chemistries, air cooled and liquid cooled, and of course everyone has a different size pack. Someday this may be practical but it seems unlikely. 

For the first time since 1986, GM will be offering American customers a passenger car powered by a diesel engine. Will Americans be willing to pay a $2,000+ premium for this fuel efficient power option? Unlike Volkswagen which offers the Jetta TDI with the mid-level SE trim starting at $23,000, Chevrolet is only offering its new engine on a loaded Cruze with leather interior starting at $25,700.

This will prove to be very interesting to watch over the next year or two.

Reshared post from +Waze

Excited to announce our first magazine partner Motor Trend Magazine! To celebrate, we opened a customized Motor Trend Waze group (US only). Be sure to join the group to stay up to date on future contests and games!
FULL STORY: http://bit.ly/YaHvEW
MOTOR TREND ON TWITTER: http://bit.ly/NLZM6F

$60 per game is just way too much for games you can re-sell or buy used

The McLaren P1 will make its official debut next month at the Geneva Motor Show

Samsung has launched a pair of low-end smartphones in South Korea, both of which are running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. While they are styled to look like the larger Galaxy S3, the internals of these 3.5 and 3.27-inch phones read pretty much like the original Galaxy S series with 1 GHz single core CPUs and 512 mb RAM. So in reality these are really shrunk-down Galaxy S devices with smaller, lower res displays.

Until a week ago, my son was using a Galaxy S Fascinate and from mid-December 2011, it was happily running and Android 4-based custom ROM. Clearly Samsung could have upgraded these phones if they wanted to, it was just a business decision to push customers to newer phones.  

I love +Monoprice and it's my go-to site to buy cables and accessories of all sorts. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rise of Monoprice is part of the reason that today's iPhones and iPods use a proprietary connector instead of the standard micro-USB found on virtually every other mobile device. 

Apple is the most profitable tech company in the world and not so long ago Best Buy was also very profitable. One of the key's to Best Buy's profits was selling ridiculously over-priced cables and other accessories along side no-margin TVs. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple recognized the trend toward generic connectors early. A decade ago, Mac laptops had standard DVI video outputs, Firewire and USB. DVI was eventually supplanted by the mini-display-port which was smaller (good) and unique to Apple at first (bad). Similarly iPods went from Firewire to the 30 pin dock and now the Lightning connector. 

By using proprietary connectors, Apple can charge a premium for its own connectors and extract a tax from any other company that wants to get into the business of hooking up to its devices, which is bad for consumers.